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A marriage scene on a leaf from Gratian (d. c1145/47), Decretum, with the gloss of Bartholomew of Brescia (d.1258), in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Southern France, Toulouse, c.1310–20]
Details
A marriage scene
A marriage scene on a leaf from Gratian (d. c1145/47), Decretum, with the gloss of Bartholomew of Brescia (d.1258), in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Southern France, Toulouse, c.1310–20]
A fine example of an unusually lavishly-illuminated legal text, with an illustration of a medieval marriage, from an important manuscript of which other leaves are in major art collections in the UK, US, and Europe.
c.425 x 290mm, a single leaf, ruled in leadpoint and written in two columns of 58 lines, surrounded on all four sides by up to 100 lines of gloss, in somewhat rounded gothic script in two sizes, rubrics in red, running titles and section numbers in blue and red, one-line initials and paraph marks alternately blue or red, two-line initials alternately blue with red flourishing or red with purple flourishing, five three- or four-line illuminated initials, most enclosing a fish or whale-like creature, one nine-line illuminated initial ‘Q’(uidam) depicting a monkey-like hybrid creature wearing a cowl, playing guitar, and exposing his unfeasibly large genitals, one large miniature, more than 12 lines high, depicting the marriage of a man and woman witnessed by a cleric and the bride’s parents, in an architectural setting with towers and crenellations (the gutter margin cut irregularly, but not affecting the text or decoration, minor cockling, some thumbing and darkening at the extreme edges, but generally in very good condition).
Provenance:
(1) The parent volume was probably made in Toulouse, the centre of legal studies in medieval France, and an important centre of book-making and illumination.
(2) ? Pierre Soybert (d. 1454), jurist and bishop of St-Papoul (about 40 miles south-east of Toulouse): at least two of the sister-leaves are said to be inscribed ‘Soybret’ or ‘Soyberti’.
(3) ? Louis-François Petit-Radel (1739–1818), architect, of Paris, who had some leaves, and perhaps the whole parent volume.
(4) ? Léon Gruel (1841–1923), bookseller and binder, of Paris: a group of nine leaves with eight miniatures were bound by Gruel, who may perhaps have owned the parent volume and extracted these leaves.
(5) Jörn Günther, sold to a private collection, Germany.
More than twenty leaves from the parent manuscript are known, including examples at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Princeton Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris, the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, and the McCarthy Collection, London.
Contents:
The end of Causa 31 and beginning of 32 (the recto with running heading ‘XXXI’ and ending with the rubric for the next Causa, ‘ca. xxxii.’), with gloss. Causa 32 concerns matters of sex and marriage. Its opening has been translated as follows: ‘Since he did not have a wife, a man joined a prostitute to himself in marriage. […] the man, led by regret, began to attempt to conceive children with his own maid. Afterwards, when he had been convicted of adultery and punished, he asked a man to take his wife by violence, so that he would be able to divorce her. When this had been done, he married an infidel woman, but on the condition that she converted to the Christian religion.’ (A. Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge, 2000), pp.7-8). This hypothetical situation is then used as the basis for a series of questions, such as: is it licit to take a prostitute as a wife? Is a man is allowed to conceive children with a maid while his wife is alive? Can an adulterous man divorce his adulterous wife? Can a Christian man take in marriage an infidel under the aforementioned condition? And so on.
Illumination:
The style of illumination is similar to works produced in Toulouse in the early 14th century, including three copies of the another legal work, Clement V’s decretals, or Clementinae (Amiens, BM, MS 371; Brescia, Queriniana, MS V.I.1; and Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek, MS Aug. Perg. I); characteristic features of the present leaf are the bold background of vertical bands, alternately gold with filigree ornament and rose or blue with diaper patterning; the towers and crenellations. François Avril, in his catalogue description of the two leaves in the Gulbenkian Museum, observes that the illuminator’s masterpiece is the Missal of Augier de Cogeux, abbot of La Grasse, south-east of Toulouse, which is datable before 1308 (London, British Library, Add. MS 17006); another important work by the same illuminator is a Pontifical at the Museo Correr, Venice (MS Cl. V. 122).
A marriage scene on a leaf from Gratian (d. c1145/47), Decretum, with the gloss of Bartholomew of Brescia (d.1258), in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Southern France, Toulouse, c.1310–20]
A fine example of an unusually lavishly-illuminated legal text, with an illustration of a medieval marriage, from an important manuscript of which other leaves are in major art collections in the UK, US, and Europe.
c.425 x 290mm, a single leaf, ruled in leadpoint and written in two columns of 58 lines, surrounded on all four sides by up to 100 lines of gloss, in somewhat rounded gothic script in two sizes, rubrics in red, running titles and section numbers in blue and red, one-line initials and paraph marks alternately blue or red, two-line initials alternately blue with red flourishing or red with purple flourishing, five three- or four-line illuminated initials, most enclosing a fish or whale-like creature, one nine-line illuminated initial ‘Q’(uidam) depicting a monkey-like hybrid creature wearing a cowl, playing guitar, and exposing his unfeasibly large genitals, one large miniature, more than 12 lines high, depicting the marriage of a man and woman witnessed by a cleric and the bride’s parents, in an architectural setting with towers and crenellations (the gutter margin cut irregularly, but not affecting the text or decoration, minor cockling, some thumbing and darkening at the extreme edges, but generally in very good condition).
Provenance:
(1) The parent volume was probably made in Toulouse, the centre of legal studies in medieval France, and an important centre of book-making and illumination.
(2) ? Pierre Soybert (d. 1454), jurist and bishop of St-Papoul (about 40 miles south-east of Toulouse): at least two of the sister-leaves are said to be inscribed ‘Soybret’ or ‘Soyberti’.
(3) ? Louis-François Petit-Radel (1739–1818), architect, of Paris, who had some leaves, and perhaps the whole parent volume.
(4) ? Léon Gruel (1841–1923), bookseller and binder, of Paris: a group of nine leaves with eight miniatures were bound by Gruel, who may perhaps have owned the parent volume and extracted these leaves.
(5) Jörn Günther, sold to a private collection, Germany.
More than twenty leaves from the parent manuscript are known, including examples at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Princeton Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris, the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, and the McCarthy Collection, London.
Contents:
The end of Causa 31 and beginning of 32 (the recto with running heading ‘XXXI’ and ending with the rubric for the next Causa, ‘ca. xxxii.’), with gloss. Causa 32 concerns matters of sex and marriage. Its opening has been translated as follows: ‘Since he did not have a wife, a man joined a prostitute to himself in marriage. […] the man, led by regret, began to attempt to conceive children with his own maid. Afterwards, when he had been convicted of adultery and punished, he asked a man to take his wife by violence, so that he would be able to divorce her. When this had been done, he married an infidel woman, but on the condition that she converted to the Christian religion.’ (A. Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge, 2000), pp.7-8). This hypothetical situation is then used as the basis for a series of questions, such as: is it licit to take a prostitute as a wife? Is a man is allowed to conceive children with a maid while his wife is alive? Can an adulterous man divorce his adulterous wife? Can a Christian man take in marriage an infidel under the aforementioned condition? And so on.
Illumination:
The style of illumination is similar to works produced in Toulouse in the early 14th century, including three copies of the another legal work, Clement V’s decretals, or Clementinae (Amiens, BM, MS 371; Brescia, Queriniana, MS V.I.1; and Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek, MS Aug. Perg. I); characteristic features of the present leaf are the bold background of vertical bands, alternately gold with filigree ornament and rose or blue with diaper patterning; the towers and crenellations. François Avril, in his catalogue description of the two leaves in the Gulbenkian Museum, observes that the illuminator’s masterpiece is the Missal of Augier de Cogeux, abbot of La Grasse, south-east of Toulouse, which is datable before 1308 (London, British Library, Add. MS 17006); another important work by the same illuminator is a Pontifical at the Museo Correr, Venice (MS Cl. V. 122).
Literature
Maria Alessandra Bilotta, ‘Un manuscrit de droit canonique toulousain reconstitué: Le Décret de Gratien’, Art de L’Enluminure, no. 24 (March 2008), pp. 2–65, at p. 58 and p. 59 (full-page col. ill.)
Alison Stones, Gothic Manuscripts: 1260–1320, Part One, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, 2 vols (London, 2013), I, p. 77; II, pp. 156–66.
European Illuminated Manuscripts in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection, ed. by João Carvalho Dias, English edition (Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 2020), no. 30 pp. 278–83 (not citing the present leaf).
Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, III: French Miniatures (Ad Ilissum, 2021), no. 70 pp. 235–43, cited at p. 242.
Alison Stones, Gothic Manuscripts: 1260–1320, Part One, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, 2 vols (London, 2013), I, p. 77; II, pp. 156–66.
European Illuminated Manuscripts in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection, ed. by João Carvalho Dias, English edition (Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 2020), no. 30 pp. 278–83 (not citing the present leaf).
Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection, III: French Miniatures (Ad Ilissum, 2021), no. 70 pp. 235–43, cited at p. 242.
Brought to you by
Eugenio Donadoni
Senior Specialist, Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts